The Screening Room Talks Robert Pattinson's Georges Duroy & 'Bel Ami'

Once Edward Cullen, always Edward Cullen? Well, Twilight star Robert Pattinson certainly hopes not. With last year's Remember Me and next month's Water for Elephants (Pattinson purportedly signed on to Elephants after learning that it was going to look like Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven), it seems pretty evident that the 24-year-old actor is doing the best he can to sidestep any possibility of being typecast in the breed of "sulking heartthrob".

There's another Pattinson movie coming up though that has been particularly difficult to market. Slated to be released sometime this year, "Bel Ami" - based on Guy de Maupassant's novel of the same name - has Pattinson playing the role of a specious 1890s Parisian social climber named George Duroy - a character whom Pattinson has labelled a "s**t." Here's more of what the Water for Elephants star had to say to Total Film about his Duroy character:

“We were really true to the book and because the guy is basically a s**t who wins everything at the end it’s really difficult to market it – especially with me in it. Everyone’s worried that everyone’s going to be thinking, ‘Oh I want him to be nice, he’s got to be nice to all the ladies’.”

Hmm... a tricky predicament indeed. How, exactly, does one go about marketing Edward "The Deceptive Bastard" Cullen? My hunch, and this is just a hunch of course, is that many twentysomethings (young and older alike) would be thrilled to see Robert Pattinson flex some honest acting chops. When it comes to teenagers though, my hunch isn't quite as strong. Important to note, however, is that in Bel Ami, he'll be playing a "sexy" specious social climber. In that regard, he can both disgust and charm us at the same time. A win for the critics here, a win for the twihards there... what's not to like?

Source | via Strictly Robert Pattinson